What is NPS?
Net Promoter Score, or NPS, measures customer loyalty with a single question: how likely are you to recommend us, on a scale of 0 to 10. It sorts respondents into promoters, passives, and detractors, then nets the two ends against each other.
It is the most widely used loyalty metric in SaaS, which is its strength and its limit. It is comparable across companies, but it compresses a lot of nuance into one number.
The NPS formula.
NPS = percent of promoters minus percent of detractors. Promoters score 9 or 10, passives score 7 or 8, and detractors score 0 to 6. Passives count in the total but not in the score.
The result runs from minus 100, every respondent a detractor, to plus 100, every respondent a promoter. It is written as a whole number, not a percentage.
A worked example.
Of 100 responses, 50 are promoters, 30 passives, and 20 detractors. NPS is 50% minus 20%, which is 30. The passives drag the percentages but do not directly move the score.
What is a good NPS?
Benchmarks vary widely by industry, so a single target misleads. As a rough guide, above 0 is positive, above 20 is favorable, above 50 is excellent, and above 70 is rare. The comparison that matters is your own trend and your direct competitors, not a cross-industry average.
NPS is a lagging signal of satisfaction across many touchpoints. Read it next to a more immediate measure like CSAT for the fuller picture.
How to improve your NPS.
Close the loop with detractors quickly, fix the recurring issues their comments name, and give promoters easy ways to refer. The score moves when the underlying experience does, not when you ask more often.
Loyalty also depends on whether you attracted the right customers in the first place. See how we attract customers who fit.